About Deep Roots

Musical roots stretch deep and wide, bringing people together in a shared experience of culture and heritage. Deep Roots Music Cooperative members come together through the love and fun of sharing music, and we envision an enduring community, celebrating and enriching our culture through this music. Our mission is to create meaningful connections between cultures, community groups, artists and audiences by offering music-related events, programs and an annual festival.

Our intention is to present regular concerts, nurture local musicians, support other local arts organizations and worthy community projects and produce the annual Canadian Deep Roots Music Festival. And while we’re at it – have a lot of fun!!

This website will keep you up to date on Deep Roots activities. We welcome new members and volunteers so just let us know if you want to join in. Visit our Deep Roots Cooperative office downstairs at The Box of Delights Bookshop on Main Street in Wolfville (office hours vary depending on the time of year) or e-mail us.

The DRMC Board of Directors oversees the Deep Roots Music Cooperative’s scope of activities and if you are interested in becoming involved at this level, check out the DRMC Inquiry to Join Board information.

The DRM Cooperative holds concerts, fund-raisers, benefits, community meetings and learning events throughout the year so plenty of volunteer opportunities arise on an ongoing basis. We are always excited to have more people join us so don’t hesitate to come and check us out.

The Canadian Deep Roots Music Festival is our largest annual event. The festival is community-based, supported by both The Town of Wolfville and Acadia University, and built on countless hours of volunteerism by a stable base of over 100 volunteers, and on in-kind and financial support from virtually all sectors of the Valley community. The festival is held in September when Acadia University students are back on campus and collaboration with Acadia always enriches the quality of the Deep Roots educational experience.

Deep Roots Music Cooperative

The Deep Roots Music Cooperative was incorporated in 2003 by a group dedicated to developing and promoting the music scene in Nova Scotia’s Annapolis Valley.

Our Vision and Mission

“The Deep Roots Music Cooperative is a non-profit organization in the Annapolis Valley dedicated to celebrating our musical and cultural heritage. The mandate of the organization is to develop year-round musical programs culminating in an annual festival and to encourage meaningful connections between cultures, community groups, artists and audiences.”

Membership

Deep Roots Music Cooperative Limited is a registered non-profit organization with the Registry of Joint Stocks of Nova Scotia under the Co-operative Associations Act. Basic membership is free and members receive our monthly news e-letter. To become a registered voting member, with full voting rights at our annual general meeting, you pay a $10 fee, OR volunteer a minimum of 15 hours throughout the previous year, OR provide a sponsorship/donation to Deep Roots, OR buy a weekend pass to the Festival.

2016 Board of Directors

DRMC Strategic Plan 2015 – 2018

Our updated Strategic Plan provides overview and insight into DRMC’s foundations as an organization. The format of the plan includes a summary and discussion of the most recently formed operational goals. Vision, Mission, and Guiding Principles are expected to remain generally as stated in this Strategic Plan, but the specifics outlined in goals, measurements, and methodologies are subject to change as new circumstances emerge. Our strategic plan is never static or fixed.

Our Roots

Look at a map of Nova Scotia and you will see we are almost entirely surrounded by water. Only the narrow strip of the Isthmus of Chignecto connects us, umbilic-like to the larger portion of our country. We are literally on the edge of the sea. The interior of the province is dotted and criss-crossed with thousands of lakes and streams, rivers and inlets. Nova Scotia is a place that water has shaped and defined.

Generations of immigrants from Europe and New England, joined the native Mi’ kmaq here on a land that is both beautiful and brutal, cruel and benign. It is a land that beckons as a haven of romantic history, pastoral and serene. What was and is the appeal of Nova Scotia, a place that we fiercely love, proudly display, declare our own? Most of us know at least a little of the history of this wild, rugged, forested peninsula where the native Mi’kmaq lived and flourished moving from shore to inland according to the seasons. We know about the arrival of the early French settlers whom the Mi’kmaq befriended.

From our school days we remember the maps of Samuel de Champlain who explored this region from 1604-1607, the stories of the early French settlement of Port Royal, and Acadie, the French name given to the area that covered Nova Scotia and much of New Brunswick. We still bear the scars of the tragic Deportation of 1755 when the Acadians were expelled from their homes for refusing to sign an oath of allegiance to the British monarch. There is admiration for our forefathers who came to this place and made their way, many of them destitute, having lost, given up or escaped another life. The Mi’kmaq, Acadians, Foreign Protestants, Planters, the Loyalists, both Black and White – our ancestors all. By their stories we feel rooted, proud of our heritage.

We only need look across the Acadian dykelands, to the rising majesty of Cape Blomidon, where Glooscap, the legendary hero of the Mi’kmaq lived, and beyond to the ocean to see what they saw; a place of surpassing beauty, changing throughout the seasons from frozen landscape to pastoral wonderland. Blomidon forms the easternmost end of the North Mountain, an ancient 160-kilometre range that protects the Annapolis Valley from the cold, wind and fog of the mighty Bay of Fundy and helps to create an ideal agricultural environment. The cliffs and weather-beaten crags of the Bay of Fundy shoreline are fronted by rocky beaches, seaweed strewn and wild. The tides beat in and out, an incredible disparity from high to low. We are blessed to live in such a place, where the landscape is infused and enriched by history, nature and the deep roots of our ancestors.

Visitors know there is something special here. They feel it in the hospitality they are shown, the easy-going attitude of the people they meet and what they describe as our ‘laid-back’ life style. They long to return, dream of making a life here. Many do. Those fortunate enough to have ties here, if living elsewhere, treasure those ties and come home as often as they can, vowing to permanently return someday. Most of us would never dream of leaving. It is our mission to share the stories and traditions of this land through music and song, to honour our place in the world and to invite new stories, new traditions, connecting with those who would celebrate with us.

For more information about the Deep Roots Music Cooperative, events or the festival, please contact us.